Ok …. 0_o

So the Republicans in Congress down in the states were defeated in a bill yesterday. No biggie – happens all the time to both parties down there, right? Someone tries to get a bill passed and it meets with defeat. This can be good and bad depending on the bill. SOPA was murdered? That’s good. Socialized healthcare was neutered? That’s bad. Some of them might be a matter of opinion as to the good and the bad, but the fact remains that some will be defeated and some will pass.

But this little one from yesterday is right up there among the most moronic bills they have tried to pass in recent years. I mean this from a straight-up “failure of reality” standpoint. One similar to the “Pizza is a Vegetable” stupidity. Now, I know that one was related to the tomato sauce on the pizza, but it was still knuckle-dragging stupid and even the people that defended it should be honest about that. But this one tops that by miles. Had it passed, it would have been one more notch toward proving that the Republicans are insane.

They had a bill put forward that was trying to declare that the Bush Tax Cuts had nothing to do with the deficit. Not one thing. Think about that for a moment. They wanted to state for the legal record that the trillion dollar cuts to the Federal Government’s income had nothing at all to do with the inability of Government to pay its expenses. Are you seeing what I’m getting at here – Government slashes its revenues, revenues it needs to pay for its many programs, Departments, employees, and so forth. It still needs to pay for these things after the cuts because it never cuts these programs at the same time to keep cash in the same as cash out. So it …. come on, say it with me here … borrows long term debt to pay for short term expenses. But that has nothing to do with the deficit and you’d be a fool and a communist to state otherwise. Takes one’s breathe away, doesn’t it?

How utterly and completely stupid. No, that’s putting down the stupid. How absolutely and utterly shit-brained. These people are literally shitheads. Can you imagine trying to legislate that into reality; basically, they are trying to legislate reality. It would be the same as legislating the sky as being Yellow, lava as cold, gravity as intelligent falling, or so on. This is asinine in its stupidity and ridiculous in the level of bald-faced lie that it represents. People – facts are not democratic. They cannot be voted on – they are or they are not. Tax cuts increase debt and deficit if there is no corresponding cut to service – that is a fact. As much a fact as electrons being attracted to positive charges. As much a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun. As much a fact as humans needing oxygen to breathe and live. These are facts. That bullshit that they tried to pull is fantasy – no, not just fantasy, but purposefully misleading bullshit designed to give themselves and their republican supporter assholes a supposed means of winning arguments about the tax cuts and the deficit. They are dead set on the deficit being anything but their fault and they are willing to lie to make it so.

How the hell do you people put up with them?

Do you want to retire someday?

Most people will answer yes to that question. Hell, who wouldn’t? Unless you have one of the most amazing jobs in the world (booby inspector, chocolate taster, etc), you will get to the point where you will no longer want to work anymore. This is inevitable – as we age, we slow down and work generally becomes more difficult. Few wish to work until the day they die … though, as I state this, I realize that this is one of those “first world problem” things. True, in third world nations, the general tendency is to work until death, so this is a bit of an elitist mentality, but bear with me here.

Anyway, retirement. We all want to do it with few exceptions. Now, the problem of late with that idea has been with the composition of the population. There are more old people than there are young and that is causing a heavy drain on retirement resources. In Canada, this means a drain on the OAS and GIS. The OAS is the Old Age Security payment provided by the government to all individuals in the country over the age of 65. The GIS is the Guaranteed Income Supplement that provides an extra boost to income for those individuals on OAS that do not get enough money to make ends meet. Canada also has the CPP – the Canadian Pension Plan, but that is a contributions plan, requiring you to work and have paid in to get money out.

Anyway, recently, the Conservative Party (whom currently makes up the Government) has let it be known that there will need to be some changes to the OAS and GIS so that these payment programs can remain viable. One such plan is to increase the age that one gets these payments to 67 from 65. That one, I don’t have a big problem with as such. People are living longer and so forth so it does make some sense to do that. However, their other plan is to create a new type of retirement savings plan that people can contribute to, similar to the RSP that many large employers operate. Only with two key differences. The first is that these will be established by employers through third party organizations, as opposed to being employer run. The second is that there are no employer contributions to these plans. These are for the employee to fund and them alone. Funds will be placed into the hands of financial institutions that will invest the money in the market. All risks will be borne by the employee. If the market tanks and the fund manager had it in a retarded location, too bad. You’re retirement is gone.

What’s my problem with this plan? Let me see. The reliance on the market to accrue the value into the fund for the individual to retire. One shift of the market and you have nothing. Oh, what’s that? The markets are always going up? You’re … you’re right! How naive of me? How could I forget that it has increased over these years?! I have to go take a look at this bastion of gain right now …. Wait a minute. Why is this company trading for $100 a share that month and $5 the next? Why … if I didn’t know better, I’d say that the increase in the market is the average performance of all stocks over the indices over time. That average hides dizzying highs (that you cannot get a piece of) and terrible lows (that you somehow get caught holding the bag for). Strange that – the market is completely unstable. You’re better off betting it all on black at Vegas. At least they’re upfront about being there to rip you off.

So my first concern is that the market does not a retirement guarantee. What of bonds or financial instruments? Funny, we already have that in the RRSP, the Registered Retirement Savings Program. A program that allows you to invest money tax free when you are younger and paying higher tax and take it out when you are old and paying lower tax. That does the job well enough, though it must be taken back into income over time or you risk getting it dumped in and paying out the ass for it.

But my second concern is for that guy over there, the individual that makes a fairly low wage. You know, the one living cheque to cheque. The one without savings of any kind. The one that cannot afford to invest in any sort of retirement. The individual that relied on the Government program existing to, you know, survive when they retire. This program is not going to help them – quite the opposite. When the time comes, they will be the people either homeless or sitting at the mall all day to stay warm because they can’t afford to heat their place. You can make all the savings plans and investment plans and such that you like. If the money is not there to put into them, then when retirement comes, they’re shit out of luck.

The only humor to all that is that the old are the largest of all voting blocks. How long do you think putting them out to pasture with nothing will actually work, hmmm?

What media?

The Liberal Media! One of those terms that you hear that you just get used to, even parrot yourself on occasion. “Liberal media”. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Didn’t used to, but that was before a concerted effort was made to make the term become firmly associated with the news media. It’s an indictment of the media – an attempt to accuse it of having a particular bias. A bias toward left leaning thought, of handling those on the left with kid gloves and ruthlessly attacking the right, and showing contempt for all things conservative.

Old Newt is the most recent politician to spout this canard to the public. His assertion recently has been that the liberal media hates him and is actively trying to destroy his campaign. He also implied that Obama would not have gotten in were it not for the media. The article where this stuff can be seen is located here: http://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2012/01/26/creators_oped/page/full/

To be blunt, this is bullshit. Let’s break down the reasons why:

The first (in this case) is that Obama’s opponent was not exactly a contender in that election. One cannot blame the media for a lame candidate and an even more ridiculous vice president pick. To be fair, Biden is not exactly a five star candidate either, but he wisely kept his mouth shut for most of the campaign.

The media does have a bias, but it tends more toward common sense. Claiming that it is “liberal” seems to basically make the claim that common sense is “liberal”. That is not the case – liberals no more have a locked grip on common sense than conservatives. Some conservatives treat any criticism of them as an attack by the media due to bias, but it is this common sense that is the root of the attack. Stating that Santorum is a homophobic bigot is not liberal bias – it’s merely repeating what he said and drawing the obvious conclusion from it. A man cannot say that homosexuals should be kept from the military or marriage to ensure our moral purity without being called a homophobe. Not because of liberal bias – but because he is a homophobe. Simple as that.

The other reason is that the effect of this supposed bias is that they cannot engage in hate speech, anti-islamic rhetoric, or other forms of bile without someone, somewhere pointing out that it is what it is – bigotry and hate and so forth. If your financial grasp is akin to that of an ignorant and petulant child – constantly spouting poorly thought out and mindless crap like “we need lower taxes to stimulate more jobs” even if all the other drops in taxes did not such thing and the media calls you on it? Tough shit, asshole. Your ideas do not conform to reality. That is not bias – it’s reality.

Recently, the Liberal Party of Canada announced that it was making a platform change on its stance toward illegal drugs. They announced that it was now the position of the Party that Marijuana would be legalized if they are voted into power in the next election cycle. They have reasons – trying to attract the stoner vote is one – but in any case that is their position.

It’s a position that I happen to agree fully with. Let me preface this with a declaration: I don’t do drugs of any kind or type. The closest I come these days is alcohol and I have a single ounce of that a night mixed into soda. The alcohol content of the types I drink is such that it can be considered negligible. I don’t smoke tobacco or imbibe caffeine, nor do I take any controlled substance. Marijuana, meth, heroin, cocaine, crack, E, pain killers, and so forth – I don’t touch them. I don’t need them and I do not prefer the idea of altering my perceptions as it tends to allow individuals people to fool my senses. That lack of control over my body is not desirable to me.

That said, I have nothing against anyone taking any of these substances, even to their own personal detriment, as long as it does not affect others negatively. That even goes for alcohol – be a drunk if you must, just don’t kill or hurt anyone in the process. Crack? Sure, if you think you don’t mind the negative effects of imbibing the substance, go right on ahead. Especially Marijuana though – it is as harmless a drug as nicotine or even more so. I have yet to find any solid evidence that it causes lung cancer like tobacco. Take anything you want, just keep it to yourself.

Part of the reason for this stance is that I am a political, economic and social pragmatist. I am fairly centered in my views. From that position, the issue of drug use is one that edges on the Liberal – Libertarian side of my thought process. Legalize and regulate within reason. People should be free to do what they wish to their bodies. The Government should be there to regulate the industry in regards to standards for the production and sale of the products.

The reason I bring this up is an article from the UK. Apparently, the Government there is re-opening the decisions on the legality of drugs there after a 10 year gap. An article on the matter provides the opinion that these substances should be legal as it would decrease crime and increase revenue. See the article here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2012/01/24/drugs-laws-is-legalisation-an-acceptable-alternative-115875-23714663/

As I stated, I agree with this stance. The revenues would be a welcome addition to Government coffers, there would be less need for prisons and the components that go with that, the number of violent crimes would decrease, the amount of police to handle more serious crimes would increase, and criminal organizations that depend on the trafficking would find themselves without steady income.

Yes, that includes all manners of drugs. The current prohibitions have done nothing to curb use. Use has actually increased along with population so the “war” has been meaningless. Some argue that legalization would open the door for children to start taking them in mass amounts. That does not really make any sense – regular restrictions would govern the sale to minors and the regulation would have a chilling effect on the “cool” factor of use. You aren’t sticking it to the man when you do them – you are actually paying him for the privilege. The negatives of a few children using are more than negated by the benefits of eliminating the criminal organizations that use it as their funding model. Besides, kids can get them now about as easily. There are always going to be individuals who will do these things – legal or illegal will not matter. It is on their parent to indicate the difference of taking the drug or not.

The upshot is that something different needs to be done. The war on drugs has been waged for decades and it hasn’t made a single inch in progress. Billions are wasted on it and individuals are criminalized for puffing on the dried leaves of a plant. This would be fine if it worked, but it doesn’t work. It has never worked. It is a money pit, nothing more. Only lunatics keep trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Cut it off and try something new.